Meta-heuristic methods for finding the minimum spanning tree

The problem of finding a minimum spanning tree (MST) is very important in network optimization. But still it is difficult to cope with this issue in traditional network optimization techniques. The minimum spanning tree (MST) consists of finding a least cost spanning tree in an undirected and weighted graph. This article presents a meta-heuristic method that quickly and accurately finds the minimum spanning tree. The proposed method without paying attention to the network topology received prufer number as coded tree and by applying the forest optimization algorithm on the initial population, finds the best tree as the best solution. Finally, by comparing the proposed method with conventional and classical methods such as Prim and Kruskal, performance of proposed version forest optimization algorithm on finding a minimum spanning tree problem will be shown.